1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for materials handling, more particularly to systems for handling recycled materials, and most particularly to a system for receiving, sorting, counting, identifying, crushing, and packaging returned drink containers.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In many states today, containers for carbonated soft drinks and beer are assessed a deposit of up to, for example, ten cents each at the time they are purchased for consumption of the contents by a consumer. After such consumption, the consumer may return each container to a return center, for example, a supermarket, and obtain a full refund of the deposit. As used herein, "container" refers to any of various sizes and styles of bottles and cans which may be formed from, for example, glass, plastic such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), or metal such as aluminum or steel. "Returnable" refers to any container which may be returned to a vendor by a consumer; most returnables also carry a refundable deposit. "Refillable" refers to any returnable container which may be washed, refilled with the same drink product as in its previous use, relabelled, and sold again. Refillables are exclusively glass containers. Most returnables are not refillable but instead are subject to a materials recycling process through which the individual containers are destroyed and the materials such as glass, plastic, and metals from which they were formed are recovered for reuse.
Until fairly recently, the handling of containers returned to a return center has been completely manual. Typically, a clerk receives containers from a customer, checks each container for deposit authenticity, counts the containers and sorts them by material, and refunds the appropriate amount to the customer. The containers are accumulated, typically without being crushed, at the outlet in large bags or bins which are then manually carried to a loading dock and loaded onto a truck which takes them to a central processing station for accounting and destruction. Such a central station may receive containers from a large number of return centers, for example, more than 1000, and must be able to accurately assign credit a large number of distributors, for example, about 100, for the containers it processes, which number may be in the tens of millions per week. At the central processing station, the bags are emptied, the containers are sorted by material of manufacture, and identified and counted by brand name of the contents to provide credit information for the original distributor who must reimburse the vendor for the original deposit. The containers are then crushed to reduce volume, and the crushed containers are packaged as by baling for shipment to a materials storage center or a materials purchaser.
The container handling just described is heavily labor-intensive. Manually-handled bags and boxes of containers can be heavy and cumbersome, and the recycling industry is known for a high incidence of back and muscle strains and consequent lost time and employee dissatisfaction.
More recently, machines have become commercially available which can perform all of the container-receiving and accounting tasks at a return center and in addition can crush the containers. Such machines, known in the trade as "reverse vending" machines (referred to herein as RV machines), can receive a succession of either individual metal cans or plastic bottles, rotate each container to read a bar code identifying the brand, count the containers for each brand and account for their number to the original distributor, and then crush each container. Crushing saves in-process storage space at the return center, but can actually make manual transport work more difficult and hazardous because the bags and boxes can hold several times the number of containers as previously and are now proportionally heavier. For example, a typical bag full of non-crushed aluminum cans may weigh less than ten pounds whereas the same bag full of crushed cans may contain about 630 cans and may weigh about 35 pounds.
Not all return centers are provided with such machines, however, and the cost of a recycling machine may always be prohibitive for smaller stores. Therefore, central processing stations must be able to receive and process both non-crushed and crushed containers.
Thus, there is a need for an automated materials handling system which is capable of receiving a wide range of metal cans and plastic bottles in a range of transport containers, of conveying, sorting, counting, crushing/shredding, and packaging the cans and bottles for shipment without significant manual handling or transport of heavy bags or boxes of containers, and of cleaning and returning transport bins for further service.
It is a principal object of the invention to provide an improved automated handling system for converting whole or crushed metal cans and plastic bottles into processed materials suitable for reuse.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an improved automated handling system for containers which requires little or no manual heavy lifting or carrying of the containers or bins.
It is a still further object of the invention to provide an improved automated handling system for containers which can account for the container item input from a large number of return centers and distributors.